I read an interesting essay.

It discussed all of the international efforts to mediate or help to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian problem(s). And it discussed how we are forever seeking ways to get the parties to this or that table, or participating in this or that joint program. It says we have this peculiar, slightly naive, uniquely American idea that if the parties were only more familiar with each other, could only truly understand each other, that peace would follow inevitably.

The author points out that this American conceit utterly ignores the facts - Those being that the Israelis and Palestinians have only had these specific competing border issues since 1948, but the two peoples have lived near and among each other for many centuries, and the problem is not at all that they do not know or understand each other. That, if anything, they understand each other's desires and positions all too well - Each would really be happiest if the other simply vanished.

I am generally of a cynical turn of mind, but even so, it troubles me to recognize that this particular cynicism may be correct. It's as though I want so badly for it to be wrong that I decide it must be.

Any thoughts? Setting aside W's reign as somewhat anachronistic, is America's longer-term national tendency toward a belief in the value of working toward more understanding simply laughably innocent?

Certainly my European friends in Miami would mostly say yes. (One has the infuriating habit, almost every time I say anything that is the least bit hopeful, of responding with some variant of: "What did you say? Do you really believe that? That is so cute! Say it again, say it again!" Grrrr ... OTOH, violence in defense of hope seems like a bad plan - It might be possible to suffer an actual fatal overdose of irony.)

Sounds like the author of the essay is the one being naive if they really believe that this is the Amercian government's position.

In my opinion- the peace process would be better off without American involvment, or British for that matter.

Although no one will admit it, The USA and the UK are not inparticial, they favor Israel and that leads to all kind of problems:

Wider resentment for the West in the middle east.

Isreal feeling it can get away with anything as it has the backing of the West.

I mean there is so much hatred for Israel in the middle east, the fact that there has not been all out war is because the west back Israel and the other surrounding nations fear the wrath of the west.

The best solution for the region is for Israel to sort out its own problems- although unfortunatly this is not the best solution for Israel itself, and so the cycle will continue.... more death and destruction, breeding more hatred each generation.

There's that and the fact that Israel will pretty happily nuke anyone who kicks up too much of a fuss.

Actually Miami, it's not quite as simple as you outlined, there is a subtle but massive complicating factor.
From what I have read, though the Arabs and the Jews HAVE lived side by side for millenniums, what happened in the first half of the 20th century was that European Jews moved in with a European mentality, vastly different to the prevailing middle eastern one.
They appeared and bought land, which the Arabs were happy to sell, thinking that the new Jews and them had the same understanding of land ownership.
When the Jews started tearing down the Olive trees which belonged to the Arabs, but was on the newly acquired Jewish land, all hell broke loose.
The British Colonists did a pretty poor job of handling the situation (understatement) and it all just got worse and worse.
Then, throw in the massive influx post WW2, and it only got worse.

At the end of the day, it's a pretty simple thing to sort out.
One group of people stole, yes, STOLE another group of people's land, much like in the States with the Native Americans.
Only this time, the land was stolen with the help of a guilt ridden international governments.

The Jews wander around a land that was given to them by their god, and the Arabs remember when it was a land they could walk and live on, and wonder why they can no longer, even the Palestinian Jews... somehow the Jewish god forgot about them.
They also get shat on from great heights by Israel.

I agree with this totally, but while the US is so dependent on Saudi oil, I don't see us leaving them to solve it themselves. I have never felt certain how much of the 'Arab street's' rage is actually the result of the reasons claimed - anger over US troops in Saudi Arabia and the US/Israeli treatment of the Palestinians - and how much of that is just rationalization, a handy excuse for a pre-existing hatred. During the buildup to Iraq, I nearly caused a cocktail party to devolve into a riot by taking the position (only about 3/4 in jest) that the US should indeed undertake the war, but not on Iraq - on Israel. Just declare 'em warmongers, decide that the Palestinians deserve our protection and advocacy, and roll across the border. Can you imagine the reaction in the Muslim world?



I had not heard this angle, thanks!

In general though, I was trying to ask whether folks believe that more contact and understanding between the Israelis and Palestinians, more talks, is a path to a solution, or only to more discord. We sometimes behave as though 'talks' were not just a worthy path, but the goal.

Below is an interesting Friedman piece from the Times this week. I have had the same impression - That it matters little to most Americans (outside Appalachia, anyway) that Obama's father's family was Muslim, but that it matters hugely to many Muslims. For Americans, your family history may be interesting but is mostly irrelevant to your life. For many (most?) Muslim societies, your family history is everything - It is your identity, it's who you are.
__________________________________

Obama On The Nile

This column will probably get Barack Obama in trouble, but that’s not my problem. I cannot tell a lie: Many Egyptians and other Arab Muslims really like him and hope that he wins the presidency.

I have had a chance to observe several U.S. elections from abroad, but it has been unusually revealing to be in Egypt as Barack Hussein Obama became the Democrats’ nominee for president of the United States.

While Obama, who was raised a Christian, is constantly assuring Americans that he is not a Muslim, Egyptians are amazed, excited and agog that America might elect a black man whose father’s family was of Muslim heritage. They don’t really understand Obama’s family tree, but what they do know is that if America — despite being attacked by Muslim militants on 9/11 — were to elect as its president some guy with the middle name “Hussein,” it would mark a sea change in America-Muslim world relations.

Every interview seems to end with the person I was interviewing asking me: “Now, can I ask you a question? Obama? Do you think they will let him win?” (It’s always “let him win” not just “win.”)

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Democrats’ nomination of Obama as their candidate for president has done more to improve America’s image abroad — an image dented by the Iraq war, President Bush’s invocation of a post-9/11 “crusade,” Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and the xenophobic opposition to Dubai Ports World managing U.S. harbors — than the entire Bush public diplomacy effort for seven years.

Of course, Egyptians still have their grievances with America, and will in the future no matter who is president — and we’ve got a few grievances with them, too. But every once in a while, America does something so radical, so out of the ordinary — something that old, encrusted, traditional societies like those in the Middle East could simply never imagine — that it revives America’s revolutionary “brand” overseas in a way that no diplomat could have designed or planned.

I just had dinner at a Nile-side restaurant with two Egyptian officials and a businessman, and one of them quoted one of his children as asking: “Could something like this ever happen in Egypt?” And the answer from everyone at the table was, of course, “no.” It couldn’t happen anywhere in this region. Could a Copt become president of Egypt? Not a chance. Could a Shiite become the leader of Saudi Arabia? Not in a hundred years. A Bahai president of Iran? In your dreams. Here, the past always buries the future, not the other way around.

These Egyptian officials were particularly excited about Obama’s nomination because it might mean that being labeled a “pro-American” reformer is no longer an insult here, as it has been in recent years. As one U.S. diplomat put it to me: Obama’s demeanor suggests to foreigners that he would not only listen to what they have to say but might even take it into account. They anticipate that a U.S. president who spent part of his life looking at America from the outside in — as John McCain did while a P.O.W. in Vietnam — will be much more attuned to global trends.

My colleague Michael Slackman, The Times’s bureau chief in Cairo, told me about a recent encounter he had with a worker at Cairo’s famed Blue Mosque: “Gamal Abdul Halem was sitting on a green carpet. When he saw we were Americans, he said: ‘Hillary-Obama tied?’ in thick, broken English. He told me that he lived in the Nile Delta, traveling two hours one way everyday to get to work, and still he found time to keep up with the race. He didn’t have anything to say bad about Hillary but felt that Obama would be much better because he is dark-skinned, like him, and because he has Muslim heritage. ‘For me and my family and friends, we want Obama,’ he said. ‘We all like what he is saying.’ ”

Yes, all of this Obama-mania is excessive and will inevitably be punctured should he win the presidency and start making tough calls or big mistakes. For now, though, what it reveals is how much many foreigners, after all the acrimony of the Bush years, still hunger for the “idea of America” — this open, optimistic, and, indeed, revolutionary, place so radically different from their own societies.

In his history of 19th-century America, “What Hath God Wrought,” Daniel Walker Howe quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson as telling a meeting of the Mercantile Library Association in 1844 that “America is the country of the future. It is a country of beginnings, of projects, of vast designs and expectations.”

That’s the America that got swallowed by the war on terrorism. And it’s the America that many people want back. I have no idea whether Obama will win in November. Whether he does or doesn’t, though, the mere fact of his nomination has done something very important. We’ve surprised ourselves and surprised the world and, in so doing, reminded everyone that we are still a country of new beginnings.

Yeah, I kind of realised that I totally didn't touch the original point of the thread after I wrote that...
But I was hoping it would go unnoticed

I don't see talks working personally.
This isn't a simple bit of marriage counseling. There is now deep seated hatred that won't go away without Israel unconditionally giving stuff back.
Israel keep doing really really shit things, they have build a massive wall, they cross drill into the West Bank for water, as it happens, theres a MASSIVE underground lake under the the West Bank and with water being such a limited resource in the middle east, it is becoming more and more of a point of conflict.

I don't see just talks working.
Israel really needs to throw it's hands up and say "we are genuinely sorry for stealing your families land, that generations of your ancestors used to grow olive trees before we just showed up and destroyed it all, so we will give you back your land, unite Palestine and dissolve israel into it."
Not that that would ever happen, but it would put it to an end.

Interesting aside, Stalin actually created a free land for Jews in Russia, and then a few years later, changed his mind and killed them all...
But you know, the thought was there...

The 'Moment of Truth' was when Isreal bombed the fuck out of Lebenon the summer before last- that should have been the turning point for the west to distance themselves from Israel- but instead they allowed Israel a carte blanche to do what the fuck they liked.

That has sealed the fate for this region for another generation at least.

Sooner or later though, because of the catastrophic failure of the war on terror, the truth about 9/11, new elections and a coming global recession the U.S.A and the U.K will adopt a new more isolationist policy and then Israel will be on its own.

If this doesnt happen I think it will be WW3, I think everyone agrees we are reaching critical mass and things are gonna change either one way or the other.

Yeah, I really thought that mini war in 2006 was the end of it, I was surprised it didn't escalate to something bigger.

I'm sorry, but Israel hasn't got a leg to stand on.
And the US continuing to side with it is foolish, shortsighted and naive. Not to break into a whole zionist theory bullshit thing, not doubt about it that it has alot to do with lobbyists and big money donations.
We have seen in the past how that level of donation directs and effects governmental decisions (Iraq?).